One of the most important things we do in a church community is to care for our fellow human beings. Many of us come to church looking for a way to connect more deeply with other people. Many of us come looking to exercise our caring muscles. We want to help; we want to relieve the suffering of another human being. We have an inkling that this might be the key to lightening our own spiritual load, as well.
There are two opportunities coming up at First Unitarian Church to strengthen our caring muscles. These are opportunities to build on the goodwill we have toward one another. We will learn and practice skills to help us care more effectively for each other and for our community.
The first is a Lay Pastoral Care Workshop which I will lead on Sun. Feb. 21 after church from 12 to 3 p.m. All are welcome to attend. We'll discuss home and hospital visiting, the spiritual value of presence, and the importance of healthy boundaries. We'll have the chance to role-play caring situations. We'll reflect on the times in our own lives when we have been cared for and when we have offered a caring presence to others. There is no fee for this workshop.
The goal of this workshop is to empower many people in our church to offer caring visits to people in your Caring Circle when they are hospitalized, homebound or otherwise in need. After attending the workshop, participants will be more ready to provide a friendly and caring presence to their fellow church members in their times of need.
Lay pastoral care strengthens the fabric of the caring community. It walks hand in hand with the pastoral care I provide as the Minister of the church. It is a way for many members to participate in the core church ministry of caring for one another.
Sign up to attend the Lay Pastoral Care Workshop here.
Caring extends beyond such pastoral situations, however, both within our church and in our community. Caring for each other means respecting each other; it means understanding differences and appreciating our common humanity. As we come to know each other more deeply at First Unitarian, and as we engage with our diverse community, building our multicultural competency will help us work together.
To that end, all are invited to a workshop we are offering in collaboration with the New England UUA. The workshop Culture, Conflict and Collaboration will take place here at First Unitarian Church on Saturday April 2 from 8:30am-2pm (Program begins at 9). The Rev. Parisa Parsa, Unitarian Universalist minister and Executive Director of the Public Conversations Project, will lead the workshop. Ministers and members from other Unitarian Universalist churches in our area will also attend.
Describing this program, the Rev. Parsa writes, "Our congregations are doing exciting community engagement programs, reaching out to Muslim communities, engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement, and seeking to welcome and include people of all backgrounds, abilities, ethnicities. It's exciting stuff, and it is also humbling to realize the limits of our own experience and understanding when we start engaging with people whose lives and perspectives are very different than our own. In this workshop, we will be introduced to the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), as a framework for understanding how we can develop greater capacity for engaging cultural difference. We will work with the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory to help build awareness of how our own cultural preference presents itself when we experience conflict, and we will explore tools for practical application of this frameworks in our congregational outreach work."
The fee for the workshop is $55, which includes snacks, lunch and a booklet on the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory.
Registration for Culture, Conflict and Collaboration is coming soon at newenglanduua.org.
By learning more about ourselves and our cultures, we can free ourselves to be more able to work together and care for one another. By exploring the value of presence and human connection, we can offer each other more compassion in times of need. I hope you will join me at one or both of these workshops to exercise our caring muscles and build the strength of our church community.
In faith,
Rev. Sarah Stewart
